(Kitco News) – Gold and silver markets could start to breathe a little easier as U.S. markets are closed in recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and it appears that soon-to-be President Donald Trump could delay the implementation of tariffs.
Trump will be sworn in Monday as America’s 47th president and gold and silver have seen extreme volatility in anticipation that he would enact significant tariffs to support American manufacturing on day one.
China’s massive industrialisation and urbanisation drove a huge commodities boom that has run its course, but some executives are hopeful it will be replaced.
Waking from a nap at his desk, Xiao, a steel trader from Wuhan in central China, reflects on how, at the end of one of the greatest booms in recent economic history, he is a lucky survivor.
About half of his competitors in this gritty office park, built near the site of China’s first ironworks, have gone bust during the country’s three-year-long property crisis. The park itself is overshadowed by the enormous concrete skeleton of an unfinished real estate project.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/
Crude oil tariffs in response to Trump’s threats would cause pain on both sides
In Canada’s arsenal of possible responses to a Trump tariff, the nuclear option is the threat to withhold, reduce or place export tariffs on Canadian energy. Already, the mere suggestion of such a tactic has caused a split between the government of Alberta, on one side, and the governments of Canada and all other provinces on the other.
Tariffs on imports from the U.S. have the potential to cause pain to certain industries and regions, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself has acknowledged that the effect of Canada’s import tariffs would be diluted by the size of the U.S. population and economy.
Miner and commodity trader Glencore said it is open to M&A transactions that create value for its shareholders, leveraging its position as a top three global copper producer.
“As we have always said, M&A is something we are good at and we are always open to do transactions that are value-accretive for the company,” a Glencore spokesperson said. Potential M&A deals were the chief preoccupation for investors in the sector in 2024, but BHP’s $49 billion failed bid for Anglo American in May showed the difficulty of combining diversified producers.
STILFONTEIN, South Africa —They look like the walking dead. Dusty men, skin and hair caked in dirt, skeletal. Some struggle to walk and collapse. They blink like moles in the harsh South African sunlight. Some look painfully young.
Operations to rescue hundreds of illegal miners at an abandoned gold mine in Stilfontein, a small mining town about 100 miles Southwest of Johannesburg, started Monday and ended Thursday when rescuers said there was no longer anyone left in the shaft.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
‘I think we have a much better understanding of the capacity in the region, and now we’re established,’ says president and CEO
Youth have a bright future at a gold mine south of Timmins. With IAMGOLD looking to invest in community and education, Bryan Wilson, the general manager of its Côté Gold site near Gogama, about 90 minutes south of the city, says education in the trades is the ticket for Timmins.
“We’ll keep working with Timmins; it’s a mining mecca,” said Wilson, at the Timmins Chamber’s state of mining event on Jan. 15. Situated halfway between Timmins and Sudbury, the open-pit mine went into commercial production in 2024.
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Tim Falconer spent three summers on mineral exploration crews, worked in two mines and studied mining engineering at McGill University for two years before switching into English Literature. He is the author of five previous non-fiction books and a veteran magazine writer. His last two books—Bad Singer: The Surprising Science of Tone Deafness and How We Hear Music and Klondikers: Dawson City’s Stanley Cup Challenge and How a Nation Fell in Love with Hockey—made the Globe and Mail’s Top 100. He lives with his wife in Toronto.
Viola MacMillan, who was one of the most facinating women in Canadian business history, was the central character in one of the country’s most famous stock scandals. MacMillan was a prospector who’d gone on to put together big deals, develop lucrative mines and head a major industry association – all at a time when career women were a rarity. Early in July 1964, shares in her company, Windfall Oil and Mines, took off. In the absence of information about what Windfall had found on its claims near Timmins, rumours and greed pushed share prices to a high of $5.70. MacMillan stayed quiet. Finally after three weeks of market frenzy, Windfall admitted it had nothing. When the stock crashed, so many small investors lost money that the Ontario government appointed a Royal Commission to examine what had happened. Meaningful changes at the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Ontario Securities Commission followed. Windfall is biographical history at its finest: the unlikely story of the trailblazer who, although convicted and imprisoned, would later receive the Order of Canada.
EXCERPT: THE QUEEN BEE
Viola MacMillan had been so successful selling houses on the side that she decided to leave her job as a stenographer at Rodd, Wigle & McHugh to start her own real estate agency. The move turned out to be ill-timed. By the end of the 1920s, Windsor was no longer booming, and then the Great Depression followed the stock market crash of October 1929. George hadn’t had a job in a while, so they moved to London, Ontario, where she sold Christmas cards wholesale. They kept the place in Windsor and filled it with boarders while taking in more roomers in the home they rented in London. She also tried to sell houses on the side, but that proved a tough go.
Rio Tinto and Glencore have been discussing combining their businesses, according to people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported.
The Australian mining giant and the Swiss commodities trader and miner have recently held “early-stage talks” about a deal, according to the newswire adding that “it’s unclear whether the talks are still live.” Rio Tinto is the world’s second most valuable mining company and shares with its Melbourne-based neighbour BHP the distinction of being valued at more than $100 billion, but only just.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/northern-ontario/
As Ontario braces for U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff order expected next week, it’s ramping up its investment in the critical minerals sector. It’s funneling more than $7 million through the Critical Minerals Innovation Fund to 17 projects.
“Our natural resources are essential to the execution of the AM CAN Plan,” said Stephen Crawford, associate minister of mines. “That is another reason why the Critical Minerals Innovation Fund is so important.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson is pitching a joint investment with the United States to bolster Teck Resources Ltd.’s production of the critical mineral germanium.
Vancouver-based Teck produces germanium at its Trail smelter in British Columbia’s Kootenay region as a byproduct of zinc mining in Alaska. Germanium is used in fibre-optic networks, infrared vision systems and solar panels.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers of Canada’s provinces are in high-stakes talks over how far to go in using oil and other commodities as a weapon if the US starts a regional trade war.
(Bloomberg) — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers of Canada’s provinces are in high-stakes talks over how far to go in using oil and other commodities as a weapon if the US starts a regional trade war.
Trudeau is meeting with the leaders of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories in Ottawa on Wednesday, trying to get on the same page over how to respond if US President-elect Donald Trump follows through on his vow to impose 25% tariffs on all goods the US imports from Canada.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Indigenous leaders warn province to think again about granting access to Ring of Fire without proper consent
Fortress Am-Can might be Premier Doug Ford’s plan to expedite critical minerals production in the Ring of Fire, but the majority of chiefs with Matawa First Nations tribal council are pushing back that it certainly isn’t theirs.
In a Jan. 16 news release, the leadership warned that, as they are the inherent, treaty and Aboriginal rights holders to the area in and around the undeveloped Far North mineral belt, the Ontario government’s ability to grant access to critical minerals “within our traditional homelands is precarious.”
STILFONTEIN, South Africa (AP) — The death toll in a monthslong standoff between police and miners trapped while working illegally in an abandoned gold mine in South Africa has risen to at least 87, police said Thursday. Authorities faced growing anger and a possible investigation over their initial refusal to help the miners and instead “smoke them out” by cutting off their food supplies.
National police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said that 78 bodies were retrieved in a court-ordered rescue operation, with 246 survivors also pulled out from deep underground since the operation began on Monday. Mathe said nine other bodies had been recovered before the rescue operation, without giving details.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/
B.C. manufactures or has access to 16 of 50 critical minerals the U.S. considers vital for national security
Economists say B.C.’s mining industry could play a major role if proposed tariffs by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump go through, after Premier David Eby hinted that critical minerals manufactured in the province could be subject to an export ban.
Eby said Tuesday the province is working on a strategy to fight the 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian goods proposed by Trump. The U.S. president-elect is threatening the measure in response to what he says is Canada’s inability to tackle illegal immigration and drug smuggling across the Canada-U.S. border.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Sickness has been common for years in Tsumeb, where Dundee Precious Metals was the biggest employer for more than a decade. Tests have now found the soil is contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals
In the citrus orchards above the Namibian town, workers often fall sick. They say they feel a burning sensation in their eyes and throats and a metallic taste in their mouths as the wind blows across from the copper smelter a few kilometres away.
“When the gas is coming from that side, we get headaches and dizziness, and sometimes you feel like you want to throw up,” says Festus Gawab, who has worked for three years on a citrus farm near Tsumeb, watering the orange and lemon trees.
